Author’s note: The following is in no way, shape or form a column directed at homosexuals or members or supporters of its community. Further, this column is in no way, shape or form directed at people who would express hatred or loathe toward the homosexual community in any fashion whatsoever. Instead, this reclamation is a return to youth in a very verbal and long overdue fashion.
- Paul Wong
To be upset by the words here and following is gay.
While that was technically the beginning of the column, the true beginning of the column will occur at the next paragraph’s beginning. Everything before now has been a disclaimer, and in most cases, a turn-off for the readership.
Words somehow find themselves readily integrating into our own speech – our everyday vernacular or daily usage. These integrations come from a variety of sources, our friends, our family, and our co-workers. Case in point: I work with a student who refers to a bowel movement (yes, a poop) as a “deuce” (get it, a number 2, hence, a “deuce”). Should I be exposed to his usage of the word enough, I will eventually find his near-constant use of said word popping into my own vernacular. The word “deuce” will begin to appear regularly into my normal conversations with said co-worker, and that usage will spill over into my other conversations with people outside of this socio-elite group of deuce-slinging fast-talkers.
But this, this is not about dropping a deuce.
That would be gay.
By gay, I certainly don’t mean that a column devoted to the vernacular integration of a slang-term for a bowel movement would be comparable to a homosexual relationship, or members of the homosexual community and its supporters. Nor am I inferring that a column simply discussing the use of a socio-colloquial term for said bowel movement has anything to do with anything embraced by the homosexual community and/or its supporters. I’m just saying it is a gay idea. Not a homosexual idea – a gay idea.
I employ the use of the word “gay” in this instance, and in a host of others, not as a derogatory strike against the homosexual community and its supporters, but instead, as I used it on the playground in the 1st grade. Surely, in first grade, I did not know that gay meant “homosexual.” Nor did I know or understand what “homosexual” meant. I did not know that when I called the game “Four Square” gay that it meant homosexual, and it wasn’t until years later that I learned what homosexual meant or that gay could also mean happy.
“Four Square” wasn’t “happy” or “homosexual.” It was gay. It was gay in the frailty of my fortunately untainted by overly self-aware political correctness mind. It (my mind) was tainted with only one thing.
Blissful, beautiful, fucking incredible, childish na